People who suffer from panic, feelings of isolation or social phobias would be the first to admit that those conditions bring out their least adorable selves. Certainly they do not bring out the sort of images well suited to a chirpy 30-second advertisement. Facing these long odds, the antidepressant Zoloft’s campaign of four commercials - each featuring an animated blob that goes from shaky and isolated to healed and happy over the course of the advertisement - achieves the implausible. It makes the struggle for stability downright cute.
Two commercials are in regular rotation. In one, the simply drawn blob is in a dark cave. It sighs and groans, and its body, which consists entirely of a face, wears a downcast expression. “You know when the world seems like a sad and lonely place?” a narrator asks. This blob does, because it is suffering from depression. Led by an orange butterfly - is that you, Zoloft? - it emerges from the cave and joins two other blobs. Its mouth turns into a smile, and it bounces playfully after the butterfly.
The other commercial, geared to those with social anxiety disorder, takes the opposite approach. The blob is at a party, pink with embarrassment as it watches a conga line of other blobs. As Latin music plays, it sweats, hyperventilates and backs away from the dancing, party-hat-wearing revelers. There’s no butterfly here, but the Zoloft kicks in anyway: the blob begins socializing, de-pinks and bounces.